Max Gazzé
La favola di Adamo ed Eva

Stuck at home due to a plaster cast, and having some free time (and to think that these were supposed to be full working days, well, fate), I’m re-listening on Spotify (I know, not on CD, I know it's not the done thing) to an old work by Max Gazzé that I haven't listened to in ages, and it seems very beautiful to me, actually, to be honest, it seems like his best work. Which, on closer inspection, doesn't even seem like a great compliment, considering it's dated 1998, and 27 years would have passed in which it doesn't seem he's produced anything at the same level. At the time he was 31 years old (few or many, depending on the era, in 1998 it seemed few, the classic young promise; now that kids start releasing records or similar already at 19, the 31 years of that time seem a lot). Yet the world evolves, ça va sans dire.

A record already terribly mature (it was his second opus), written almost entirely with his brother Francesco Gazzé, a poet. Now, not everything is clear, and the album is all too long (14 tracks), some lyrics, frankly, seem difficult if not pretentious, and the union between poetry and music appears a little less clear, especially on the second side, when he tries to soar high but his wingspan seems modest (the diptych "Come conviene" and "L'origine del mondo" doesn’t convince), yet in some (many) parts, the work is happy and even fun. Where lightness or irony prevails. Gazzé, we know, is a remarkable bassist, and if he's joined by some of the most notable Italian instruments, the game is made: Riccardo Sinigallia; Giorgio Baldi; Lucio Morelli, to name a few but good ones. The rhythm acquires with some musical passages that manage even to surprise, sometimes thanks to delightful musical ideas (see the seemingly simple "Vento d'estate", the smash hit of the time).

He packs the album with ironic and tasty songs, two of these, "Una musica può fare" and "Cara Valentina" had mixed success at Sanremo. But above all, the latter shows enormous musical growth: it’s a piece with a contagious rhythm, a swirling text, and a final repetition that leaves the track wide open. It is essentially the consecration of an artist who in a single album managed to blend enlightening and festively popular songs (the title-track also participated in the Festivalbar, and it doesn’t have lyrics or music typical of Festivalbar, but it is engaging) with complex pieces that hover between the pop of the decade and the electronics of the '80s, with lyrics that sometimes leave you amazed and sometimes, despite being clearly derivative, are pleasing. I would unhesitatingly cite the sensational "Raduni ovali", the beautiful pop atmosphere of "L'amore pensato", the reasoned and obsessive mess of "Casi ciclici", and the "stylish" "Colloquium Vitae" with a text halfway between Battiato and Bennato ("Life, you will have to keep promises"; "Life, remember that a man loves remember who pulls the strings you haven't noticed yet that I am moving you without strings").

Sometimes it goes over the top ("Due apparecchi cosmici per la trasformazione del cibo") but from the surprising cover ("Adamo ed Eva" taken from the manuscript of "Beato di Liebana") it is clear that Gazzé has created a refined, cultured, and popular album at the same time as would happen to him more. No, it doesn't "seem normal" to me.